Guys, I’m too wrapped up in Thanksgiving duties to get anything up these next few days (fully expect to hear some jokes off of that unintentional phrasing). So I’ll leave you with some things to discuss, starting with Max Landis’s baffling decision to keep badmouthing his peers. Landis took to his favorite delivery device, Twitter, to tell the world that The Revenant (my old script review here) sucked, making fun of DiCaprio, Hardy, and Inarritu in the process. Is there anyone out there as confused by this as I am? I think Landis is operating on this belief that he’s “keeping it real.” And I suppose he is to a certain degree. But it’s a bad look when you’re attacking three of the most talented people in the industry while you’re putting out rotten turkeys like American Ultra and Victor Frankenstein. It’s kind of like the bat boy for the Seattle Mariners telling Derek Jeter his swing sucks. Wait til you get a jersey with your name on it before you start taking on the big boys.

There’s a subplot to all this. After Landis’s American Ultra bombed, he went on a Twitter rant (man, this guy likes Twitter) about how his movie failed because the public only wants to see established properties and IP. They refuse to take a chance on something new. So the fact that he’s now writing about one of the most famous characters of the last 100 years, Frankenstein, should warrant an interesting reaction if the movie doesn’t do well, especially in the wake of the movie he’s blasting, which is about as original as a Hollywood film gets.

Moving on, Thanksgiving is usually one of the better moviegoing weeks, as studios try to capitalize on families being in that holiday group-activity spirit. But I can’t say I’m too excited about this week’s offerings. Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur looks to be aimed directly at the Kids Aged 2-4 demographic. And The Danish Girl seems to be less about telling a story and more about winning an Oscar for its lead. The wild card is Creed, with Fruitvale Station director, Ryan Coogler, coming back to direct his star, Michael B. Jordan, again in this Rocky 6.5 vehicle. Deadline had a nice interview about Coogler pitching Stallone on himself as director before he’d even made a film (he would direct Fruitvale later). One of the best things about the interview was Coogler realizing, while shooting, that a key punch in one of the fight scenes didn’t look real enough and the dilemma posed by getting Jordan to take a real punch despite not legally being able to tell him to do so. In today’s Concussion-obsessed world, that turned out to be a risky ass move.

I have a couple of issues with this one though, despite the trailers looking solid. First, Rocky Balboa (or “Rocky 6”) was way overrated. Stallone tried to make it out to be him “correcting his wrong” with Rocky 5, and making something grittier and more in tune with the original film. That’s great. But why the hell would your main fight be an exhibition match?????? One of the first things we’re taught in screenwriting is STAKES. The stakes need to be high for the audience to care. And the climax? The big fight? It has to have the biggest stakes of them all. So why should we care about a freaking exhibition bout? Huge screenwriting fuck-up there. They needed to figure that out before going in front of the camera.

The second issue is that, from the trailers at least, Creed is propped up on a shaky foundation. Jordan plays Adonis Johnson, the son of Apollo Creed, who famously fought Rocky Balboa in the first two films (and was killed by Drago in the fourth!). Somehow, Adonis has never met his father. And grew up in an orphanage or something. So let me get this straight. The son of one of the richest boxers in history didn’t inherit a single dime from him? I’m guessing he’s maybe an illegitimate child then? Hmmm, I’m smelling a fish. Clearly, they know this series works best with an underdog hero. And the entitled son of one of the best boxers in the world isn’t underdog in any sense of the word. This forced them to pull out all the stops to turn someone who would obviously be famous to someone who was unknown, hence the “foster child” angle. Whenever I feel those screenwriting gears straining underneath the page – especially when it’s to keep a franchise alive – I get skeptical.

But hey, I hope I’m wrong. Unlike Landis’s Victor Frankenstein, which is coming in at 13% on Rotten Tomatoes, Creed is trending at 93%, a full 80 points higher.

So, I send the question out to you now. What do you think of all this? And what are you going to watch this weekend (doesn’t have to be anything I’ve mentioned)? Just a warning: I will automatically delete anyone who answers, “Jessica Jones.” (that’s a joke btw – though I will be watching you – oh yes, I will)

Oh, and if all of that bores you, tell me what you think of the new Captain America trailer! Tony’s maaaaa-aaad…

Genre: Thriller
Premise: A home invasion crew targets the richest family in town, only to get a lot more than they bargained for.
About: This script was just purchased a couple of months ago. Eric Bress actually sold ANOTHER script, American Drifter, a couple of weeks later. Bress is best known as the co-writer and co-director of The Butterfly Effect, a film that he’s remaking as we speak. Let’s all pray that Ashton Kutcher isn’t in it.
Writer: Eric Bress
Details: 85 pages

Is Kodi Smit Mcphee ready to go this dark??

They say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

On Monday, I officially changed the definition of insanity to just: George Miller, after seeing how fucked up Fury Road was.

Well, I’m about to change the definition again. I’m going to give half of that definition to Eric Bress. Holy SHIT is this guy dark. I mean…. Lol… I’m sitting here still shaking my head. And I finished this script 20 minutes ago.

This is, like, disturbed shit on a whole other level.

But the great thing about art? Is that you can be disturbed as well as admired. And I admire the hell out of this screenplay. I mean, this was supposed to be a home invasion movie. How crazy could it get?

Here’s an answer for you: VERY FUCKING CRAZY.

The Schottenfelds are rich as hell. We notice that by their 20 acre property and huge mansion. We have the wiry, maybe even wimpy, father, David. The trophy wife who’s secretly a badass in Barbara. 17 year-old emo, Meredith. And the jock of the family, 12 year-old Lance.

Oh, and there’s one more family member. 18 year-old loner, James. Now, the way this script is written, we start with a home invasion and then jump back in time at various points to get to know the characters before the event.

And what we learn about James is that he’d purchased a Contra-sized arsenal of weapons and was planning on pulling off the biggest school shooting in history. Luckily for those students, his parents found out about it, and were about to send him off to a special program to make him better.

But James hasn’t left yet. And thank God for that.

On a seemingly normal evening, the family is getting ready to do what families do, when eight men barge into the house and demand, well, just about every cent this family has, including every bank account they’ve stashed money in across the world.

The group is led by one nasty motherfucker in Burke. Burke isn’t afraid to feel up Meridith, hang Lance over a 30 foot balcony, light David on fire, and beat the shit out of Barbara. This is just not a good dude in any sense of the word.

The problem is, while Burke seems to know way more than he should about this home, he doesn’t know that James hasn’t left yet. And that James has a stockade of weapons that could take down ISIS. What follows is the reversal of all reversals. Burke and his crew go from the hunters… to the hunted.

There is so much good about this script, I don’t know where to start. First of all, it’s not for the squeamish. There is some hardcore violence in here so if that’s not your thing, the charms of this screenplay will likely not work on you.

But if you were delighted by scripts like Fatties, then read on!

Let’s start with ANGLES. Remember that there are about 75 movie types out there. By that I mean, sub-genres within the main genres. So we have the teenage romantic comedy, the alien invasion movie, the body switch movie, the serial killer procedural, the trapped in a box with monsters flick, the buddy comedy, the revenge flick, the coming-of-age movie, etc., etc.

These are all proven movie types so they’re used over and over again. What your job is when you write one of these films is to find an ANGLE that makes them different. So take teenage romantic comedies (Clueless, The Breakfast Club, Mean Girls). If you’re going to write a teenage romantic comedy, you need to find a new angle, because if you give us a generic teenage rom-com or one that doesn’t offer anything new (example: the Freddie Prinze Jr. masterpiece, “Down To You”), we won’t feel any need to see it.

A recent example of Hollywood finding a new angle for this type of movie is The Fault In Our Stars. A teenage romantic comedy about cancer patients. Hadn’t been done before. It was risky as shit, but usually the angle you pick will be risky. In order to find a new angle, you’ll need to do something that’s never been done before. Which is, by definition, risky.

So here we have the home invasion movie. We’ve seen this film before with Panic Room and Firewall and The Purge. So what’s the new angle you’re going to bring to it? In American Hostage, it’s that the teenage son is a psychopathic murderer who’s a thousand times worse than any of the invaders. And instead of them hunting him, he hunts them. That’s the angle that makes this script different.

Now if that was all there was, it wouldn’t be enough. You can’t JUST be different. You have to execute. And boy does Bress execute. I usually know I’m in good hands when I read something in a script that I’ve never read before. That tells me the writer is creative and that he’s TRYING. That last part sounds like it should be a given. But 90% of writers out there aren’t trying hard enough to make their scripts great. So it’s a big deal when I notice this.

What’s the moment I’d never seen before?

James drives the invaders’ van up to the house with the head of one of the men he’s killed planted on top of the swaying antennae. Before he killed this poor guy, he made him record a message in his iphone to the other invaders (telling them to leave). So when the invaders come outside, the head bobs back and forth, the message playing from the iphone, making it sound like the severed head is really talking. It’s the creepiest fucking image I’ve read all year.

But what about the story, Carson! I mean is this just a series of gross gimmicks? No! This script is really good. And it works because we know that James is out there. And that he’s killing these guys one by one. So we’re driven to keep reading to see where he’s going to strike next. And since Bress did such a great job making us hate these guys (beating up the mom, groping the daughter, lighting the dad on fire), we can’t wait for that next attack.

Also, I really liked the jump-back structure here, with the invasion occasionally interrupted to go back a week and meet the characters in their everyday environments. This allowed us to get to know the characters on a deeper level so that we gave a shit when they were stabbed or hit or… lit on fire.

Usually in a script that jumps into the action right away, you don’t get that, so we don’t really know the people we’re supposed to care for. Bress found a way around that problem. And he didn’t do it with super-long flashbacks or anything. Each jump-back was one scene. Very tight and easy to digest.

The script also made me feel something I’ve never felt before. We learn, early on, that James planned on shooting up a school, one of the most horrific acts you can imagine. So the fact that you’re rooting for this guy gives you this complicated uneasy feeling inside. You know you shouldn’t love him. And yet you do. You can’t wait for him to dole out more pain to these assholes.

It’s pretty rare that a script will make you feel multiple things at once. So when you find one that does, you raise your cap. And then put it on a car antennae.

The only downside to this script is that it’s so violent that it won’t be for everyone. And that sucks, because there are people who won’t be able to appreciate how well-written American Hostage is. And it’s really well-written. This is a great example of how to write a memorable contained thriller.

[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Do yourself a favor and consider an UNEXPECTED HERO for your screenplay. Everyone knows Vin Diesel’s going to beat ass, that The Rock is going to take names, that Jason Statham is going to kick your teeth in. These characters are all very on-the-nose. So what if, instead, you went with the most unexpected choice for the ass-kicker (or hero) in your movie? A mentally unstable 18 year-old who was planning to shoot up a school. That’s about as unexpected as it gets.

Get Your Script Reviewed On Scriptshadow!: To submit your script for an Amateur Review, send in a PDF of your script, along with the title, genre, logline, and finally, something interesting about yourself and/or your script that you’d like us to post along with the script if reviewed. Use my submission address please: Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Remember that your script will be posted. If you’re nervous about the effects of a bad review, feel free to use an alias name and/or title. It’s a good idea to resubmit every couple of weeks so your submission stays near the top.

Genre: Psychological Thriller
Premise (from writer): A woman who spent her childhood in a cage, is rehabilitated and given the chance to live a normal life when she moves out on her own, but she meets a mysterious man that threatens to undo her progress.
Why You Should Read (from writer): Okey dokey, gonna keep it simple here… I’m a long time reader of SS. I often lurk in the shadows and comment very rarely, but I absorb all the information like a sponge. I’m a HUGE horror fan and also a lover of character driven films. I wanted to do a new-ish spin on the genre, so I’ve come up with this psychological thriller that I think has a good hook and some complex characters. I’m hoping notes from Carson and the SS community will bring the script to the next level.
Writer: Brittany LaMoureux
Details: 93 pages

A month ago, I laid down the gauntlet. I said, readers of Scriptshadow! I implore you to find me a screenplay heretofore unseen by the Scriptshadow Community, yet still worthy of an Amateur Offerings slot! And so you pitched hundreds of scripts in an endless bid to sway my interest, but only one stood out. Everyone seemed to agree that “Pet” was the script to beat.  And so review it I will.

Now yesterday we talked about the importance of challenging actors with complex roles so you can get financing-worthy attachments to your project. Pet excels in this area, creating two mentally troubled characters trying to carry on their first ever romantic relationship. So the script’s got the characters going for it. But what about everything else? Time to get your adoption papers in order. We’re not leaving here until we find ourselves a pet.

Mya had the unfortunate distinction of growing up in a cage, courtesy of her psycho mother. When said mother commits suicide, leaving her daughter to rot, her uncle, Jake, comes to her rescue. Horrified by the chain of events, he agrees to raise Mya.

Cut to 12 years later and all that cage stuff is in the past. Mya’s a young woman and wants to get out on her own.  Experience the beauties of life.  Like standing in the middle of the cereal aisle at 2 in the morning trying to decide between Lucky Charms and Cocoa Krispies.  Oh yeah, it’s great being an adult.  Jake’s worried about Mya because, well, she’s been sheltered ever since he took her in. To unleash her out into the world now is kind of like dropping a kitten into the middle of New York City.

Mya seems to be doing well though, until she meets Early, a burly intense 30-something who’s a little slow. When Early’s dog gets hit by a car, Mya extends him an olive branch, and all of a sudden they start hanging out. That goes well at first, until Early starts telling Mya that she can’t go to work or contact her uncle.  She has to stay here, with him, all the time.

It appears that our little cage-dweller is once-again, a pet. She’ll have to navigate Early’s increasing paranoia and homicidal tendencies if she stands any chance at getting out of this alive. I guess that means if she doesn’t hurry up, it’ll be too late.  Heh heh.  Get it?

Brittany is a good writer. Pet displays all the qualities of a professional script. The description paragraphs are tight (usually 2 lines or less). There’s a lot of showing instead of telling. The characters are all memorable, even the less important ones (I adored the quirky paint shop owner). The draft is very clean. I don’t think I saw a single spelling/grammar/punctuation error. Which is RARE.

Most tellingly, you see a plan of action here. A lot of times when I read an amateur script, I don’t get the sense that the writer knows where he’s going or what he plans to do. In stark contrast, there’s a deliberate building in Pet, about a girl who escapes from a cage being slowly manipulated into entering another one.  We know that the writer knows where she wants to take this.

The sense of dread that permeates the story is reason enough to keep reading, as we know this is going to end badly and are worried for Mya. A good line of suspense can power the majority of a plot.  But it can’t operate on its own.

At a certain point, I realized how little was going on in the story.  The relationship was developing, and there’s a little side-story about Mya trying to be a better employee at her paint shop.  But other than that, we’re just watching Mya and Early get to know each other.  And since neither of them talk that much (which I’ll get to in a sec), it wasn’t that interesting.

To address this, I thought we needed a twist or two in that middle section – something that changed things around to freshen the story up. The way Hannibal Lecter is released from his cell in the middle of Silence of the Lambs. Something that stirred up the narrative. I actually thought that Brittany was going to trick us. She’d imply that Early was going to be the psycho one, but then pull the rug out from under us and have Mya be the one who cages Early.

The way it stands now, we have yet another creepy guy potentially killing a woman. Is that an original choice?  Can we do better?  Now that I think about it, I realize that my need for twists may imply a bigger problem. Maybe the second act is too slow because we’re not approaching it correctly. Maybe Mya needs more to do, more directions she’s being pulled in.  More plot!

And about that dialogue. Typically in a script, you’ll have one character who’s the dominant talker, and a second character who’s the secondary talker. These two will take up 60% of the movie’s dialogue or more.  In Pet, you have two “secondary” talkers, and that results in a lot of basic, restrained dialogue.

Whenever your main two characters – the people who talk more than anyone else in a script – have similar ways of talking, you get these huge chunks of dialogue with very little contrast.  Dialogue where both characters sound the same can be brutal.  But if both characters are also introverts and therefore don’t talk much?  Now you’ve really handicapped yourself.  I mean how are you going to make that kind of dialogue consistently entertaining?

Here’s an exchange from the middle of Pet. “Nobody aint gonna lock me up no more.” “It’s okay.” “You don’t get it.” “Yes. I do.” “I need to paint.” This is a small sample size but it’s reflective of how a LOT of the dialogue reads. And you can see how that might get frustrating after awhile. At least with me, I wanted to pick these two up, shake them, and say, “Say something!! Don’t just mumble four-word sentences. Say what’s on your mind, man!!” But that moment rarely came.

And to be honest, I don’t know the perfect solution to this. If you make Mya like Clementine from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (babbling all the time) it wouldn’t fit the mood or the tone of the story. If I’d spotted this in the outline stage, my solution would’ve been to avoid it altogether. Rebuild the story so you’re not stuck in this pothole in the first place.  But that doesn’t really help us now, does it.

I guess technically you need to bring a little more personality out of one of the characters.  I always start with humor. Every character has their own sense of humor. It’s a little harder to find humor in really serious pieces, but it can be done. And when it’s done right, it can liven that dialogue right up.  Look no further than The Skeleton Twins.  That dialogue could’ve been really depressing.  And it was in places.  But they found ways to make it funny too.  And I realize Pet isn’t that movie.  It’s its own thing.  But I really feel like one of these two needs more personality if we’re going to stick with them for 95 minutes.

All in all, Pet was a solid effort from a writer I’ll want to see more of in the future. If I hear a good logline from Brittany, I’ll definitely ask to read the script. But this one moved a little too slow and the characters were just a little too reserved for me.

Script link: Pet

[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Early in the script, one of the characters in Pet mentions dating on Craigslist. I’ve been noticing a new trend in screenwriting where writers depend a little too heavily on internet-related activities for their characters. They go on Craigslist or watch porn or jump on Twitter or check videos on Youtube. The more it happens, the more it sounds LESS LIKE a real person’s life, and MORE LIKE the average day of a certain writer who never leaves his computer. Your writing is a reflection of your experiences. But your characters should have their own experiences. And a lot of those will be real-life stuff. Don’t fall back on the internet because it’s easy and what you know.

Here they are folks!  These are the top 10 Amateur scripts ever submitted to Scriptshadow (not including The Disciple Program and Where Angels Die).  My voting system works like this.  People send in their top 10, and then I assign a sliding point system to each entry.  So if something finishes number one on someone’s list, I give that 10 points.  Finishing number two gets you 9 points.  Three gets you 8 points.  I then tally all the points up.  I’ve included the point totals of all ten.  I believe over 300 people voted!

Inside the numbers: Only one script that got a “wasn’t for me” made the list (Primal, at number 8).  The Savage South, a rather low key script at the time, had a lot more supporters than I thought!  Finishing at number 8.  Things got REALLY crowded at the bottom and some scripts JUST MISSED the list.  The three that were the closest were Goodbye Gene, with 170 points, A Bullet For My Best Friend, with 163, and Guest, with 156.  Also a sorta surprise was Grendl’s Real Monsters making the list.  A lot of people seemed to like that one.  Well, I’ll leave it at that.  Here is the list.  Congratulations to the top 10, and thanks to everyone who voted!!!

1) Rose in the Darkness – 533 points – A secluded boy’s way of life is threatened when he befriends Rose – the girl whom his parents have imprisoned in the family attic.

2) Patisserie – 502 points – A young Jewish woman in occupied France escapes the Nazis by changing places with a shop owner. But as her love grows for the other woman’s husband and child, so does her guilt.

3) Fascination 127 – 419 points – A group of men are hired by a mysterious client to remove Jim Morrison’s casket, give it to him for 24 hours and then return the casket into the ground before it is publicly exhumed to be moved to the United States.

4) Keeping Time – 390 points – A for-hire time traveler who specializes in “preventing” bad relationships meets his match with a mysterious woman who claims to also be a traveler and is determined to stop him from completing his mission.

5) Fatties – 308 points – When a lonely masochistic chubby chaser is abducted by two fat lesbian serial killers, it’s the best thing that ever happened to him.

6) The Devil’s Hammer – 297 points – When an outlaw biker, and soon to be father, attempts to leave the sins of his old life behind, he is pushed by a vengeful Sheriff into the arms of an ancient cult of disease worshiping sadists.

7) Primal – 234 points – After survivors of a recent hurricane relocate to a quiet Louisiana bayou town, a creature goes on a nightly rampage of terror and carnage. Convinced it is the legendary werewolf known as loup garou, an intrepid teen vows to discover the beast’s true identity and destroy it.

8) The Savage South – 201 points – When a professional contract killer discovers he’s become the target of an assassination himself, he teams up with the would-be killer to figure out who set them up.

9) Real Monsters – 180 points – The members of a small Irish town housing a supposed Lochness-like monster in their lake find their world turned upside-down when an American documentary crew arrives to find out if the monster is real.

10) Reunion – 176 points – At their ten-year reunion, a formerly bullied outcast decides to enact revenge on the cool kids who made his life miserable.

Well, you asked for it so here it is!  I’ve had my Top 25 scripts over on the right-hand panel there forever.  But we’ve finally had enough Amateur Friday reviews (over 100) to create a Top 10 Amateur Scripts List!  We need to celebrate you guys who have done what many consider impossible – impress the impossible-to-impress Scriptshadow readership.  Here’s how it’s going to work.  I’m listing all of the serious competitors below (scripts that had high “wasn’t for mes,” “worth the reads,” “impressives,” or any buzz) and you can vote for your Top 10 (or Top 5 if you haven’t read all of them) by e-mailing me at carsonreeves3@gmail.com with the subject line: “VOTE.”  Include your list from 1-5 or 1-10.  I’ll take votes up until 11:59 pm Sunday, August 31st and announce the following week.  Let’s take a trip down Amateur Lane. Good luck!

PATISSERIE
Premise:  A young Jewish woman in occupied France escapes the Nazis by changing places with a shop owner. But as her love grows for the other woman’s husband and child, so does her guilt.

LE PETITE MORT
Premise: An alcoholic stilt walker must save the small town that loathes him from an invasion of zombie midgets.

LORD OCKLEY AND THE ALIEN
Premise: A wanton English Lord hires a “hermit” to live in his garden (as was the trend in 18th Century England). An alien from another planet stumbles into this scenario, who the drunk Englishmen consider to be French.

360
Premise: After surviving a violent car accident, a woman is attacked in her home by a masked assailant and finds herself living out a time loop that has her experiencing the attack from several points of view.

SERVED COLD
Premise: A Detroit bank thief accidentally steals from the Canadian mob and is forced to lift a rare painting from the Detroit mob to pay them back.

HEMINGWAY BOY
Premise: Fatherless Copywriter, Nick Adams, uncovers a stash of immaculate love letters dated the year he was born and post marked from Key West and Havana, Cuba. Convinced he is Hemingway’s bastard love child, he travels to Key West with teenage son in tow to usurp his birthright.

OF GLASS AND GOLDEN CLOCKWORK
Premise: On the eve of the Third World War, a young soldier abandons his post to search out a robot claiming to have information regarding his father’s unsolved murder, only to discover these two are more connected than he ever could have imagined.

AESOP THE COURAGEOUS
Premise: When his mother is kidnapped and sold into slavery, the legendary fableist must overcome being a short, ugly mute and outmatch Greek philosophers and bloodthirsty kings to rescue her and save the kingdom.

ON THE CORNER OF RUE ST. ALOISE AND RUE DU CHEVAL
Premise: November 1944, Strasbourg, France. A Solider wakes up with amnesia in “La Zone Occupée”. The only thing he remembers is his duty to deliver a package on the corner of Rue St. Aloise and Rue Du Cheval at 10:30pm. No name, no date, and under no circumstances is the package to be opened.

BREAKING THE CHAIN
Premise: A gambler wins millions on a crazy bet, yet is unable to
 tell anyone. Instead, he resolves to secretly use the money to improve the 
lives of those closest to him, and win back the love of his long-suffering
 wife.

THE IMAGINEER
Premise: The life story of one of the most creative minds of all time, Walt Disney.

THE ALIEN DIARIES
Premise: A book appraiser working at an old farm mansion finds a diary that implies the family who used to live there 200 years ago may have come in contact with a crashed alien ship.

THE HOUSE THAT DEATH BUILT
Premise: A recently widowed cop reclaims an old property in a small southern town, only to discover that key figures in the town have been hiding a horrifying secret.

THE SLEEP OF REASON
Premise: After his wife goes missing, a man heads to the darkest reaches of Transylvania to find her.

I THINK MY FACEBOOK FRIEND IS DEAD
Premise: After receiving panicked messages from a girl he’s been Facebook-stalking, a meek agoraphobe wrangles together his closest internet friends and journeys into the real world to find her.

REAL MEN PLAY FUTEBOL
Premise: A teenage boy hoping to escape the poverty of his West African village finds the opportunity when a professional futebol scout comes to town.

TRIBUTE
Premise: A marginally talented tribute band finds itself magically/accidentally transported back to the year 1973 and seizes the opportunity to become actual rock stars by “stealing” the career of the group they’ve long made a living out of impersonating.

CAPTIVE
Premise: When a group of bank robbers kidnap his wife, an accountant must try and save her. But when they all end up in a strange Rube Goldberg-like trap-filled mansion, the kidnapping becomes the least of their worries.

THE HOSTAGE
Premise: (from writers) It’s a brilliant bank robbery plan. But there’s one contingency no one could have planned for: One of the hostages turns into a werewolf, turning the bank they’ve locked down to keep out the police into a deathtrap. And turning a criminal into a hero.

REUNION
Premise: At their ten-year reunion, a formerly bullied outcast decides to enact revenge on the cool kids who made his life miserable.

CHARMING
Premise: After beating out his twin brother for the throne, Prince Charming finally settles down with his new bride-to-be, Snow White. But when she ditches him for his brother, he will have to find a way to win her back.

THE AUGMENTED GEOLOGIST
Premise: (from writer) In Victorian England, a respected geologist studies a strange crystal artifact that grants him incredible powers, tears his life apart and sends him on a deadly chase to discover its unearthly origin.

REAL MONSTERS
Premise: The members of a small Irish town housing a supposed Lochness-like monster in their lake find their world turned upside-down when an American documentary crew arrives to find out if the monster is real.

MOVERS
Premise: A moving company specializes in moving humans.

EDEN’S FOLLY
Premise: A left-for-dead rancher wakes up in the middle of the desert with no memory of who he is. He goes off in a search to find out what happened.

THE INCREDIBLE SHAVING MUG FRACAS
Premise: (from writer) A lost cache of Nazi gold could save the crumbling hometown of a failed actor. But the key to the treasure, an antique shaving mug, is also the key to his doom. He must outwit, battle and defeat weird and dangerous Nazi sympathizers who have skulked into town searching for him and the treasure.

BEST FRIENDS FOREVER
Premise: After learning that his family is leaving the town he grew up in, a heartbroken 13 year-old boy convinces his best friends to go trick-or-treating one last time in a daring attempt to break their town’s unbreakable trick-or-treating record and become legends.

MAD DOGS
Premise: A repressed teen werewolf tracks down her estranged father — the sheriff of a resort that caters to the hedonistic pursuits of werewolves — but an outbreak of weaponized rabies turns their reunion into a fight for survival.

KEEPING TIME
Premise: (from writer) A for-hire time traveler who specializes in “preventing” bad relationships meets his match with a mysterious woman who claims to also be a traveler and is determined to stop him from completing his mission.

NINE TWELVE
Premise: (from writer) A man embarks on a relationship with a 9/11 widow after claiming to have lost his brother in the attacks.

ROSE IN THE DARKNESS
Premise: (from writer) A secluded boy’s way of life is threatened when he befriends Rose – the girl whom his parents have imprisoned in the family attic.

VERONA SPIES
Premise: (from writer) After landing a job at an escort service, a young woman learns that her first date is an international spy who’s just stolen a multi-million dollar pharmaceutical secret. She agrees to help him shake the assassins waiting outside of the hotel, and soon finds herself embroiled in a deadly game of corporate espionage.

GOODBYE GENE
Premise: (from writer) A demented 14 year old girl strikes up a weird relationship with a convicted sex offender. Shit gets crazy when they embark on a twisted road trip in a “rape van.”

INHUMAN
Premise: (from writer) After a radical exorcism leaves a possessed teen in a coma, a psychologist reluctantly helps the clergymen, who performed the rite, wake the child, but soon suspects foul play and finds himself trapped in a secluded monastery with only one person to turn to for help: his newly awakened patient.

WHITE LABEL
Premise: (from writer) When a young vinyl music store owner loses everything — love, friendship and vinyl records — he struggles to rebuild his life, hindered by pimp-like friends, a beautiful agent provocateur and an ex-girlfriend who refuses to let their relationship die until she finds a suitable successor. In the vein of HIGH FIDELITY and 500 DAYS OF SUMMER.

THE THALLUS OF MARCHENTIA
Premise (from writer): Based on a true story, a group of college kids in the 60s pose as royalty from a made-up country (Marchentia). What starts out as innocent fun, spins out of control when the media turns their arrival into the most important visit in the city’s history.

THE TRAGIC LIFE OF DEXTER STRANGE
Premise (from writer): A colorful but washed-up bad boy recounts his epic rise and fall in Hollywood on an online video blog.

MARLOWE
Premise (from writer): P.I. Sam Marlowe shows novice writer Raymond Chandler the realities of detective work, juggling gangsters, corrupt politicians and movie star Jean Harlow to find out who’s burning farms on the Arroyo Seco Canyon.

THE SAVAGE SOUTH
Premise (from writer): When a professional contract killer discovers he’s become the target of an assassination himself, he teams up with the would-be killer to figure out who set them up.

THE DEVIL’S HAMMER
Premise (from writer): When an outlaw biker, and soon to be father, attempts to leave the sins of his old life behind, he is pushed by a vengeful Sheriff into the arms of an ancient cult of disease worshiping sadists.

PRIMAL
Premise (from writer): After survivors of a recent hurricane relocate to a quiet Louisiana bayou town, a creature goes on a nightly rampage of terror and carnage. Convinced it is the legendary werewolf known as loup garou, an intrepid teen vows to discover the beast’s true identity and destroy it.

BARABBAS
Premise (from writers): In 30 A.D., a charismatic stonemason bent on revenge leads a band of guerrilla rebels against the Roman occupation of his homeland.

A BULLETT FOR MY BEST FRIEND
Premise: When a young gang of girls kills her brother, Dakota, a former member of the gang, vows revenge.

SUNNY SIDE OF HELL
Premise: (from writer) When a woman is kidnapped in Texas during the Dust Bowl, her husband embarks on a harrowing odyssey where he’s forced to confront danger in the forms of Mother Nature and man and also the mysterious past he buried years ago.

SUBMERGED
Premise: (from writer) Trapped in a shrinking air pocket deep beneath the ocean’s surface, the survivors of a plane crash battle to stay alive long enough for the rescue teams to locate them.

WHAT DOESN’T KILL YOU
Premise: (from writer) When a child killer is sentenced to death under dubious circumstances, the investigating detective discovers that the very man being executed holds the keys that can solve the crime.

WARNING SHOT
Premise: (from writer) A mother and daughter held hostage at an isolated farmhouse struggle to survive as one of their captors grows increasingly unstable.

ECHOVAULT
Premise: (from writers) When an elite team of Allied forces assault a top secret research facility, they become trapped underground with a sadistic Nazi Colonel and a mysterious Machine which allows him to switch bodies, turning the team against one another as they desperately try to survive.

GUEST
Premise: After checking into a hotel to escape her abusive husband, a woman realizes guests in the next room are holding a young girl hostage.

PROVING GROUND
Premise: 9 strangers wake in a deserted Mexican town besieged by killing machines: they must discover why they’ve been brought there to survive.

FASCINATION 127
Premise: A group of men are hired by a mysterious client to remove Jim Morrison’s casket, give it to him for 24 hours and then return the casket into the ground before it is publicly exhumed to be moved to the United States.

FATTIES
Premise: When a lonely masochistic chubby chaser is abducted by two fat lesbian serial killers, it’s the best thing that ever happened to him.

UNDERTOW
Premise: Unhappy with her life, a housewife visits a physicist who transforms the way she views the world – and her own mind.

A LOT OF BLOOD
Premise (from writer): After two friends leave the bar after a night of drinking, they discover their car missing from the parking lot, an RV in its place, and a woman trapped inside.

IN THE FLESH
Premise (from writer): A woman fights to escape an isolated home controlled by an Incubus, a demonic force that feeds on sexual energy. A task made more difficult by her co-hostages, who are content to remain under the creatures spell.